


out of season

by mavnificent



Category: Glee
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mavnificent/pseuds/mavnificent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes an apology from your best friend is like Christmas in July.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of season

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a Christmas present for one of my best friends.

Puck was down to his last pebble before Finn finally came to the window to wrench it open, and it was about time, because it was at least twenty rocks later and he knew Finn wasn't as deaf as he liked to pretend. He scooted forward on the tree branch he was wrapped around, spitting out a mouthful of leaves that smacked into his face, and took aim with another pebble the moment Finn's head poked out.

“What?” Finn snapped, followed by, “Ow! Stop being a dillweed!” when Puck lobbed another pebble at his head. The window started shutting again with a squeal.

“Hey! Wait, where you goin'?”

“I'm not speaking to you, remember?”

Puck didn't remember actually. He liked pretending he didn't, in any case, because if he pretended like Finn wasn't mad, usually Finn would give in after a while and Puck could scrape by without even needing to apologize. It was the one certainty he had. He wasn't sure what was different about this time, but something was and it made him uneasy. He ignored it because he was good at that.

So he scoffed and rolled his eyes, and he would have crossed his arms too if they hadn't been wrapped tight around the bough of the tree. Not breaking his neck was more important than looking cool for once.

“I'm serious, dude. I'm not speaking to you,” Finn said again.

“Only you are right now, genius.”

Finn glared at him in a way that made him look like a 2-year-old and not a 12-year-old, and there was something so sincere about it, so for-real about Finn's irritation, that it actually made Puck feel itchy with guilt. He tossed a non-threatening chunk of bark at the off-white trim around Finn's window, didn't meet his eyes.

“C' _mon!_ You're bein' a freakin' girl about this, Finnessa,” he said.

Finn's hands disappeared from the window sill. “No way, Puck. You broke the bro-code. I'm already saying too much. Now go away.”

“No,” Puck said stubbornly. “Make room. I'm climbin' in.”

“Not happening.” When Finn's arms came up, he was taking aim with the rubber band gun they'd made two summers ago, and Puck couldn't even yell a protest before Finn's finger squeezed the trigger and he was smarted square in the forehead. _Boom! Headshot!_ Puck lost his balance, slipped and swung upside down.

“Go away, Puck!” Finn yelled like Puck wasn't _right there,_ reloading his gun. Puck rubbed his forehead.

“Don't be a douche!”

“Eye for an eye!” Finn shouted over him. He took aim, shot, beaned Puck in the shoulder. Puck yelped, voice cracking, and let go. Mrs. Hudson's azalea bushes came up to meet him with a rustling _crack!_

“Are you alive?” Finn called down. Puck slit his eyes open. Finn hovered far above him, outlined by a stretch of cloudless blue.

“No!” he groaned.

“Good!” Puck figured Finn's exit would have been way more dramatic if he'd been able to snap the window shut. Instead, it caught on years of paint and screamed all the way down.

He laid in the bushes and listened to the dead Ohio summer crackle around him until he heard a bee buzzing near his ear, so he launched off the bed of flowers, because the last thing he needed was to add insult to injury.  
  
  
  
When Mrs. H found Puck later in the afternoon, he was sprawled out in the bone-dry kiddy pool in the front yard, staring up at the sky like he was waiting for a miracle. She dropped her paper sack of groceries back into the passenger side of her Jeep and crossed the lawn. The grass was crisp, dry, a reminder that she had kicked that deadbeat lawn-man to the curb and _screw_ him, she never needed him anyway. Her hands found her hips as she stepped into Puck's sunlight, chasing the lines away from his young face and making his eyes ease from their squint; he didn't look at her.

“What're you doin' in Laney's pool, Noah?” Carole asked, amused.

“Finn hates my guts,” he responded, deadpan, finally glancing at her. The curls around his temples were damp with sweat and they stuck to his forehead, dark and slick. She knelt and pushed them back.

“Nah. He doesn't,” she soothed.

“He totally does, Mrs. H,” Puck said, pushing himself up. He fixed her with a look he would vehemently deny was a pout if she called him out on it and she smiled soft, caught his lower lip between her fore and middle fingers. “I don't even know whad'I did,” he continued around her pinching fingers.

“Oh no?” Carole lowered herself onto the yellow grass. Puck went back to squinting. “He told me what happened, Noah. You really hurt his feelings.”

Puck rolled onto his side, facing her, and pillowed his head against the uncomfortable plastic edge of the pool. “It's not like I _knew_ he liked Santana.” Carole raised her eyebrow. Puck duck-billed his lips. “So maybe I did. Big deal! He should get over it.”

Carole's other eyebrow lifted to level with the first. Puck dropped his eyes to the seam of her jeans, glare not so much from the sun as it was to keep his place. The last thing he had expected when he'd shoved Finn into the pool at Brittany's party was for him to get all upset about it. It'd been funny! Santana had laughed, anyway, and Finn had been trying to get her attention, right? Not that it had bothered Puck or anything.

“What if the situation had been reversed? What if Finn had pushed you into the pool in front of the girl you liked?”

Puck scoffed.

“Noah.”

He stared at the bushes hugging the Hudson's home, untrimmed and slightly wild. There were shoots sticking out that needed cutting, a hole punched into the corner of one of the shrubs where Finn and Puck had wheedled through when they'd found a pregnant cat yowling back there. She'd disappeared sometime, earlier that month, took her kittens with her except the runt they'd had to bury. Finn hadn't said anything when something had gotten in Puck's eye as they'd dug a shallow grave.

“It'd suck,” he said finally, picking at the bubbling plastic sticker on the kiddy pool.

“Yeah, it'd suck,” Carole reiterated, nodding her head. “He was really embarrassed. It's not a cool feeling. If you don't want him to hate you –” he glanced up and Carole smiled “– you should apologize.”

Puck all but yowled and rolled onto his stomach, limbs stretching out over the sides of the pool.

“You gotta do it, Noah,” Carole said over his noise. She swatted him on the back. “Don't be such a baby!”

He huffed and looked over, “He's not gonna forgive me, y'know. He really liked San. Like– _liked-_ her liked-her.”

Carole rolled her eyes and climbed to her feet, patting bits of grass off her stone-washed jeans. “You boys are helpless. C'mon. I know something Finn likes way more than Miss Lopez. I'll help you apologize and you guys can be up to no good again by dinner time.”

Mrs. H offered her hand. Noah took it and she hauled him to his feet and then gave him a shove in the direction of the Jeep.

“But first you're gonna help me bring in the groceries.”

Puck whined the entire way up the drive.  
  
  
  
He thought a mortar and pestle were torture devices before Mrs. Hudson had dropped a thick square of chocolate into the hard bowl and told him to get to it. And he'd had her hot cocoa before, but only around Christmastime when it was too cold to function and snow was piled up to their waists outside. He ground past the ache in his arm, staring at her from where she stood over the stove, watching a pan of warming milk.

“Hot chocolate during summer?” he'd asked, and Mrs. Hudson had smiled and turned the heat down to a simmer.

“Nothing says you care like something outta season,” she said with a laugh.

She'd given him specific instructions, the first one being _be careful when you go up the stairs_ and the second one being _don't lick the whipped cream off the top, he'll notice._ Which sucked, because there were _sprinkles_ and he was lucky if his powdered cocoa at home came with freeze-dried marshmallows in the packet. Puck wrapped his hands carefully around the mug – Finn's favorite, one with a chipped handle and a faded screen of DBZ characters that Puck was one hundred percent jealous of – and made his way up to Finn's room in the attic, steps feeling their tentative way up the stairs.

When he knocked on the door, the muffled voice that floated out was immediate.

“Not hungry, Mom!”

Puck rolled his eyes and tested the doorknob, and finding it unlocked, pushed his way in.

“That's a lie, y'black hole,” he said.

Finn rolled over on his bed, surprised. It disappeared a second later, glower in place. His eyes cut to the open doorway over Puck's shoulder. “Mom?” he called, then shouted. “Mom!”

Puck huffed, offended, and kicked the door closed. “Shut _up_ , Finnessa. She knows I'm here.”

Finn pushed himself up looking utterly betrayed. He grabbed the rubber band gun from his bedside table and took aim. Puck held the mug of hot cocoa up in defense and also as a peace offering.

“Don't!” he said, then peeked over the mountain of Cool Whip. “That hurts. I coulda died earlier.”

“Good,” Finn said again, and Puck glared. “What's that anyway?” he asked with a jerk of his chin and a flop of his long hair.

“Your ma–“ Puck paused and sucked at his teeth. That wasn't what he was supposed to say. Carole had told him to take the credit for the hot chocolate, not to mention her. He stared at the way the whipped cream was starting to melt at the lip of the mug, how the sprinkles were bleeding color because of the heat. Puck shifted from foot to foot, glanced at Finn, whose wide brown eyes weren't even wary, not the way his other friends' would be if he was standing around in their room holding a cup of hot chocolate.

And that was the thing, wasn't it? That no matter what, even when Finn was supposed to be mad at him, because he'd been a douche...he wasn't. Not until he reminded himself. Puck guessed it was that blind trust that made them best friends. It was that blind trust that made it so Puck _had_ to apologize, because Finn deserved it.

– even if Santana Lopez wasn't worth getting into a fight over, because she didn't even like Finn or anything, she just liked the attention, but _whatever_ , wasn't _his_ problem.

“It's hot chocolate,” Puck said finally, looking down at the mug in his hands.

Finn wrinkled his nose. “In summer?”

He sucked his lips into his mouth, the back of his neck burning. “That's what _I_ said! But I didn't know how to apologize and Mrs. H saw and she said she'd help me so she made me smash chocolate, and have you ever done that before? It's really lame and now my arm hurts more, but if you don't want it–”

Finn swung his legs over the side of the bed, hands outstretched. “No, wait! Gimme!”

Puck twisted away, made a loud sound of consideration.

“Dude!” All it took was Finn's whine and Puck was pushing the mug of hot chocolate into his hands. He slurped at it, and when he pulled up, his nose was covered in white foam and Christmas sprinkles. Puck laughed.

“What?”

“Nothin',” he said, and Puck slid down onto his backside next to Finn's bed, watched him drink a few more sips of hot chocolate. “So are we cool?”

Finn licked his upper lip. “Heck no.”

“ _What?_ ” All that trouble for _nothing?_

Finn set his mug down on his nightstand and pointed his rubber band gun again. Puck shuffled back so fast he got carpet burn on the heels of his feet.

“Where's my apology, dweeb?” he demanded.

“You're drinkin' it!”

Finn lowered the gun, genuine disappointment in his frown. “You knew I liked Santana, Puck, and you made her laugh at me. It sucked really bad.”

Puck pulled at a loose thread in the carpet, watched it come up to reveal the gridded plastic underneath. He smoothed it down and sighed. He hated that he felt even remotely jealous over Santana. It's not like she was going to steal his spot as Finn's best friend, no matter how much Finn liked her. He wasn't quite sure why he hated it when Finn's attention was elsewhere, he just knew that he did, and then took it _out_ on him. Puck felt backwards against the floor, arms stretching.

“M'srr,” he mumbled to the ceiling fan.

“What's that?” Finn asked loudly. Puck groaned and lifted himself onto his elbows.

“I'm _sorry,_ okay? Yeesh. I'm sorry I pushed you into the stupid pool.”

Finn grinned at him then, brilliantly, if not smugly, his front teeth a little crooked. Puck tried not to smile and mostly succeeded.

“Cool,” Finn said. He took another loud slurp from his mug. “You want some?”

Puck shrugged. “Okay.”

He was in the middle of swallowing when Finn said “I back-washed” around a spit bubble, and Puck spewed out hot chocolate with an “Eugh!” Finn gave a shout of triumph and shot Puck with another rubber band, then leapt off the bed and raced out of his room. Puck let him have a head start out of the goodness of his heart. Sort of, anyway.

He tossed back the rest of the cocoa and made sure Finn had none to come back to, before he tore past cowboys and horses and pounded down the stairs after him.


End file.
